In 2015, young music-enthusiasts Hannah, Anna and Bea founded ‘Girls Against’, the first campaign of its kind that advocates for a safe and harassment-free environment for gig-goers. After sharing similar experiences and views, the girls were keen to end sexual pestering amongst live-music audiences.
They have been reaching out to bands, the press and their peers to shed light on the issue, aiming to rally the general public to unite against such behaviour. ID&C design wristbands for events, music festivals, charities and much more, and decided to join forces with Girls Against by launching a tailored wristband, showing their support of their cause.
You started the campaign as a means for young girls to share similar experiences in a safe environment with their peers, but it has evolved into something much bigger. Are you happy with how the campaign has progressed?
Anna: Honestly, it’s overwhelming how much we’ve grown over the past year or so, but of course there’s still a long way to go! We’ve done a lot in terms of raising awareness and making victims feel safe and supported – which is a significant part of what we want this campaign to be and do – but now we want to push to make a change in terms of venues and security training, as that’s a large part of the problem.
What do your day to day dealings involve, and is it manageable given that you are all in full time education?
Bea: Our day to day dealings are pretty intense. On top of running our Twitter account, we get at least 3 emails a day, as well as new and exciting opportunities that come through, so I’d say we’re extremely busy. Sometimes we need to know when to stop for a couple of days to focus on school work. We have expanded the group in the sense of recruiting new reps to help us out. These guys work all round the country doing important things like contacting local venues and handing out flyers.– They have been an amazing help!
Have you received any negative press or negativity from fellow gig-goers and if so, how have you combated it?
Anna: In terms of negativity, it’s either ignorant folk who think our campaign is pointless (many people deny sexual assault happens at gigs) or has no merit, because it’s run by teenage girls (which is naive as we’ve made a huge impact and the fact that we are young and female is important in who we are). Or there are people who complain we haven’t done enough, which is infuriating as we work very hard to campaign and have so many commitments in our busy lives. Campaigns also take time to fully form and make an impact, so we obviously need time to do everything we want to do, but we are working on it!
As a group, you acknowledge that issues around sexual harassment and assault are not exclusive to girls. How would you describe the gender division of the responses you receive?
Anna: Being a girl means you’re more likely to fall victim to assault, and as a result, the support we’ve given has mainly been to girls. However, there have been a handful of reports from men who we’ve given support to, and as we don’t want to exclude anyone whatsoever, we make sure the support we offer is helpful and available to all. We’ve also given support to people of other genders or people who haven’t disclosed what they identify as, which is a part of who we are as an inclusive campaign – we want to help as many people as we can.
Hann: We make it quite clear that we’re here for all genders and we strongly encourage men and those of other genders to discuss their own experiences, because it can be so damaging not to.
Do you have any other ideas about how to combat the issues occurring? For example, venues advocating a no tolerance policy, security and staff wearing GIRLS AGAINST merch, or even having a limit on alcohol sold per person at venues.
Anna: So far, we have created merchandise and got bands involved – many of whom have done announcements at their shows to let people know it’s a safe area. We have posters and flyers up in many venues that help to spread awareness. We also promote that our DMs on Twitter are always open if anyone wants to talk to us about their experiences, and we try to give the best advice we can to the individual case.
Bea: We have so many ideas! Our main priority is getting an action plan for security completed by the summer. It will include working with security companies to create a guideline to follow when dealing with sexual assault at gigs, and making sure the crowd know what they can do if they experience it too.
To raise awareness at gigs, you’ve sold badges and approached fans to discuss the campaign. We are thrilled to be able to support your cause by creating a tailor-made wristband with your slogan. How effective do you think this will be in building consciousness?
Hann: Yeah, we love the merch side of our campaign! It’s fun for us to do and a fun way for others to engage with the campaign. The idea behind the merch for us is to raise awareness of the campaign in a subtle way, much in the same way that charities use wristbands and badges to raise awareness of their cause. They’re a good talking point and one of the purposes of our campaign is to make sexual assault easier to discuss for those who have experienced it.
You have already received a lot of press coverage and you seem to have gained an impressive following. What are your next steps and hopes for the campaign?
Bea: We would love to expand to more genres of music and connect with festivals too. We’re in the process of contacting various festivals but nothing secure yet – we just have ideas to expand to a much larger scale, and festivals are the next step. Maybe safe spaces in festivals could be an idea but, we have no solid plans yet, so people will have to just keep an eye out. We also aim to work with more charities who are fighting against similar things and we HOPE to hold an event ourselves very soon (but the details of this are top secret!).
Keep up with all things relating to Girls Against, and pick up a wristband, over at their website.
Interview and images courtesy of ID&C